Tag Archives: Reid Perry

Ugly Christmas sweaters, favorite movies, future collaborations and Christmas lists were topics of conversation when The Band Perry — fresh off of a month on tour in Europe — spent about 30 minutes answering questions from fans on Twitter last week.

Click the photo above for a photo gallery from the making of the 'CMT Crossroads.' Here, Patrick Stump of the Fall Out Boy and Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry talk over their parts as they rehearse a song on Oct. 1, 2013, in Nashville. (Photo: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)

Stump, lead singer for rock group Fall Out Boy, was baffled — even with the help of a teleprompter — the first time his group and Perry’s sibling trio attempted the soaring ballad in rehearsal. While Kimberly Perry nailed the lyrics to her trio’s song, Stump didn’t even attempt the lines assigned to him and asked to go through the song with just Kimberly Perry and a guitar.

“There were a lot of rhythms that just came in sideways in my head,” Stump said of “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” “By the end of it, that will probably end up being my favorite song because that was the one we spent the most time on.”

The unexpected collaboration between The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy and the initial confoundedness with “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” is par for the course for CMT’s long-running cross-genre duet series, “Crossroads.”

While members of both bands struggled at times during rehearsals, they managed to learn each other’s songs enough to confidently perform them together during the next day’s live taping of “Crossroads.”

“It’s interesting because there’s all this angst going (into the taping) about who is going to do what,” said John Hamlin, executive producer on “Crossroads” and senior vice president of music events and talent at CMT. “When ultimately the musicians step onto the stage for the first rehearsal, they instantly speak a language that the rest of us don’t speak and they work it out between themselves. They are always very gracious and very generous and very inclusive.”

Members celebrated their fourth No. 1 song “Done” with a party at The Bridge Building in Nashville on Monday. With their trademark hairdos perfectly coiffed and their outfits high-end and coordinating but not “matchy matchy,” as Kimberly Perry said, the sibling trio looked every inch the country stars they’ve recently become.

“We are excited about the fourth No. 1, the second one in a row off ‘Pioneer,’ which the sophomore (album) jitters have gratefully all gone away at this point,” said Kimberly Perry. “We’re really proud about this one.” I think the coolest thing about a No. 1 is the way it translates live. Every time it hits that spot, you can just tell the fan fervor for that song is just 10 times hotter than anywhere else.”

“Just for Kimberly’s piece of mind, we always tell her it isn’t about her,” quipped Neil Perry. “That’s what we tell her.”

“I only inspire the really happy songs,” Kimberly Perry shot back.

The trio said the recording of “Done” signified members were finished with “Pioneer,” which was released earlier this year. It was the last song they recorded for the record.
The song also has become a break-up anthem for the trio’s fans, and Kimberly Perry said the stories from people at their show’s about the song just keep coming.

“There was this big, burly guy that came through the signing line a couple of nights ago and he said, ‘My girlfriend, our song was “Better Dig Two” and now it is “Done,” she said.

Neil, Kimberly and Reid Perry of The Band Perry. (Photo: Sam Simpkins/The Tennessean)

When Kimberly Perry and her brothers Neil and Reid were children, their mother yanked them up during sibling squabbles, set them in front of a window and said, “Out there is a world you’re going to have to fight in every day, and you’re not going to do it in our household.”

The scolding not only set the tone for their family, but the siblings say it also made their career as a family band possible. The trio has spent more than 630 days on the road in the past two years. If they couldn’t get along, the band wouldn’t survive — especially over the past few months as The Band Perry worked fervently to finish sophomore album, “Pioneer.”

“There are times when we have fierce debates over boxes of cereal or over really important things like creativity, but we never cross a certain line, and I know it’s because our parents raised us that way,” says Kimberly, her blond hair tucked under a ball cap, seated between her brothers at a Nashville recording studio. “We are never personally insulting.”

The siblings’ mother, Marie, declined to talk for this story, saying she preferred to keep the emphasis on her children. But Dann Huff, the band’s producer on “Pioneer,” has seen the sibling harmony firsthand in the studio and found the dynamic surprising.

The Band Perry will release new album “Pioneer” on Tuesday, and Kimberly Perry says, “it’s everything we’ve been thinking about and experiencing since we released our debut album.”

“Our whole worlds have changed,” she says. “The personal landscape. The professional landscape. We talk about a lot of different emotions in ‘Pioneer,’ all very true stories.”

And they had some outside help crafting those stories. The band, most known for four-time platinum single “If I Die Young,” spent much of 2012 on tour with Brad Paisley. Band Perry members co-wrote “Forever Mine Nevermind,” a song on “Pioneer,” with Paisley.

The Band Perry’s new album “Pioneer” will be in stores Tuesday, but it’s not the only sweet treat fans can expect from the trio in the coming days.

Gigi’s Cupcakes has named a cupcake after the band — The Very Perry Chocolate Cherry — a name and flavor inspired by a song on “Pioneer.” In “I’m a Keeper,” the girl in the song wants to change her name to Cherry.

“I’ve always wanted Cherry to be my name,” says Kimberly Perry. “That girl in ‘The Outsiders,’ Cherry Valance, she’s always been one of my favorite heroines in literature. So the cupcake was named after the song and we got to taste test.”

The band even had a hand in developing the flavor profile. They were presented with two cupcakes, a chocolate covered cherry flavor and a yellow cupcake filled with cherry pie filling.

“We kind of combined the two of them,” says Reid Perry. “That was another thing on our bucket list, a cupcake.”

The Very Perry Chocolate Cherry is a white cupcake sweetened and colored with maraschino cherry juice with chopped cherries inside and topped with mounds of chocolate frosting and a cherry. The Perry’s cupcakes will be available at Gigi’s Cupcakes Fridays and Saturdays starting in a couple weeks.

Shelton, host of the show, jokingly told those participating they had to step it up this year.

“I want to talk about something that happened last year, more specifically the country artists that are here, the teams,” he said. “You guys suck. It’s embarrassing. Craig, you have a (darn) hunting show. And, Gary LeVox won this last year. That sucks. Let’s raise the bar for God’s sakes. Sober up.”

While many participants in the competition are big hunters, including Morgan, Lewis, Shelton and Brice (who says he has a “eat-what-you-kill” policy), the Perry brothers say they honed their gun skills at the firing range.

“It seems like easier to go out and shoot skeet than, it is 4 o’clock in the morning waiting for something to walk by,” Neil says.

Click to see a gallery of the Band Perry performing at the Ryman Auditorium on Feb. 20, 2012, in Nashville, Tenn. (Shelley Mays/The Tennessean)

The Band Perry christened Ryman Auditorium’s new Brazilian teak stage on Monday night with an 85-minute set that not only showed off their dexterity as singers, songwriters, and performers, but also gave the audience a solid sneak peek as to what they can expect on the trio’s next album.

In short: more hits.

The sibling trio kicked off the show, their first headlining local gig, with “End of Times,” which Kimberly Perry described before the show as “a big statement from the three of us.”

“I feel like musically it has progressed us to a new level while still embracing everything we were on the first album,” she said. “It’s a little bit of an eerie way to start the set, very Southern gothic.”

They followed up with their new down home country “Sweet Baby Love,” which got the crowd on its feet and then steered into more familiar territory with their first radio single “Hip to My Heart.”

“It’s going to be a bit of a musical narrative tonight,” Perry told the crowd. “We’re going to do a couple of medleys, deeper cuts on the album, but we also wanted tonight to be about the continuing story of The Band Perry.”

Other new songs included “It Burns for You,” which Perry said was a “new one for the lovers” and spotlights youngest brother Neil Perry on mandolin. “Back to Me Without You,” was a crowd favorite that might be the trio’s next single. “Jimmy” is a sassy up-tempo tune that showcases the siblings’ rock ‘n roll influences. “A Night Gone Wasted,” punctuated by a few lines from The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” features a bouncy vocal exchange between Neil and Kimberly and seems destined to be a light-hearted anthem among young adults.

The Band Perry’s breakout hit “If I Die Young” just earned the sibling trio a triple platinum certification signifying the band has sold more than 3 million copies of the single. The recognition comes a year to the week since Perry released its self-titled debut album, which is projected to reach the 1 million mark in sales by the end of the year.

“Although we've planned, prepared and prayed for this moment for the past 13 years, we're still a little overwhelmed by the warm welcome we've been given," said Kimberly, Neil and Reid Perry in a statement. "Birthdays have always been celebrated big in this family, so to have a 1 -year-old album and hear that 'If I Die Young' has touched so many people; it makes us feel that we're sharing our celebration with all of you."

And that’s not all. The band, which is up for five CMA Awards at the Nov. 9 awards show, is set to perform on Dancing with the Stars at 8 p.m. Tuesday on ABC. The CMA Awards will air live from Bridgestone Arena at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Congratulations to The Band Perry, who sold out their Feb. 20 show at Ryman Auditorium in 20 minutes on Friday. Fans purchased 2,300 tickets for the sibling trio’s first official headlining gig in Nashville.

“Our live show is where we see (career) growth the most going from clubs in Vegas to the Ryman,” says Reid Perry. “It’s tangible growth we put our hands on, and see all this hard work is starting to pay off.”

Kimberly Perry gives the credit for the band’s continued success to their fans.

“I think it’s a challenge to continue to refine what we do every single day and get better and better and better,” she says. “But we credit our country music family for showing up. They’re the ones that make us look like we’re growing.”

The band’s fourth single from their self-titled debut album “All Your Life” is now at radio.